


A new iconography of resurrection.

by Kaesteranya



Category: Final Fantasy VII
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-05-03
Updated: 2011-05-03
Packaged: 2017-10-18 22:32:24
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 377
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/194023
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Kaesteranya/pseuds/Kaesteranya
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Chasing after the bits and pieces of whatever's left of you, in the eyes/smile/hands of another.</p>
            </blockquote>





	A new iconography of resurrection.

**Author's Note:**

> The title is taken from Prompt #40 over at the 52 Flavors community.

He’s in all of the little things, actually. Untamed spikes aside, Cloud Strife looks nothing like Zack Fair: he doesn’t have his height, doesn’t have his muscle, and he’s blond, the blond of a boy from up in the mountains, or maybe from the valleys that they cradle within their arms. He isn’t the sort of leader who’ll run you ragged just by being in the same room as you; he’s the sort that lingers in the background or a few steps too far ahead while you’re walking to your next destination. Zack was always the man at the center of the stage, brighter than the sun and thrice louder than everyone else. Cloud, in contrast, is the invisible one, the shadow of a man at the edge of the action.

 

How Cloud flips his grip on the hilt of his sword right before cleaving through the skull of an enemy soldier, however, makes Aerith remember running through Sector 5, down a path cleared out by Zack’s own hand. How Cloud looks first thing in the morning – as he’s crawling out of one of their tents, as he’s stretching both arms straight up then out wide and swinging left then right to work the kinks out – brings her back to quiet days in the old church, where she’d tend to her garden and watch Zack move about, tracing his progress through the corner of her eye. The occasional turn of speech never fails to make her pause. The grip of his hand and the brilliance of his smile never fails to steal the breath from her lungs, every single time.

 

She knows, of course, that it’s foolish and unfair, to keep zoning in on the fleeting similarities and ignoring the world of difference between the man in her memories and the man standing right in front of her. She knows that Cloud doesn’t even realize that when she’s reaching out to touch his face or hold his hand, she’s reaching not for him, but for the ghost he’s trying to live as. She has lost Zack before, however, and until she finally has to let him go, she plans on holding on to the pieces that she’s been left with, even if they’ll cut her hands apart.


End file.
